A Portrait of Jesus

A Sign of Contradiction

One of the most striking phenomena in the Gospels is the endless confrontations between Jesus and the religious authorities. I, like all of us, have read these episodes for years, but it made little impression on me until a few years ago as to how large a segment of the Gospels those confrontations occupy. I am aware some modern Christian and Jewish scholars doubt that these confrontations ever took place, but they are so intricately tied in with the many messages Jesus taught during those rapid-fire exchanges that I find it difficult to doubt the veracity of those episodes. Indeed, an integral part of the Good News is expounded during those exchanges, which start out very early in Jesus' ministry.

In a way, Jesus lays out His mission statement on one occasion when He discusses His relationship to the Law. "I have not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it. Amen, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or title of the Law will be lost until it is all fulfilled… Unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven."

Then Jesus goes on to proclaim that goodness is not in the external observances of commandments, but in the spirit that inspires the proper observance of the Law. A person can keep all of the commandments, yet never do one good act. Commandments are negative. They tell you what not to do. Jesus was positive. He promulgated a new law, a law based on love. "If you are offering your gift at the altar, and you remember your brother has anything against you, leave your gift on the altar, and go first and be reconciled with your brother. Then come and offer your gift" (cf. Mt. 6).

In Jesus' day the law of retribution was in vogue, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." If one injured you, you had a right to take revenge. Jesus' holiness countered that. "But I say to you, do not resist the evildoer. On the contrary, if someone strikes on the one cheek, offer him the other… You have heard it said, 'You shall love your friend and hate your enemy.' But, I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who persecute and calumniate you, so you may be children of your Father in heaven, who makes His sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust… You therefore are to be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect."

In those few words Jesus outlines His understanding of goodness. Perfection as God is perfect is not in observance of laws and commandments. God does not observe laws or commandments. God's perfection is in His love. It is His essence. God is love, and whoever is of God is inspired by love. We are to become perfect in loving the Father and in caring for one another. That is why, in the only example Jesus gave of the Last Judgement, He does not use the Commandments as the basis for judgement, but "Come, blessed of my Father, when I was hungry, you gave me food; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink, etc."

It was not only the people of His day, but it is so common for people of all times to just keep commandments and church laws and observe the externals of religion. In living this way, we miss the point of what worship of God really is, falling each day more deeply in love with God, expressing that love by our sensitivity to the pain and hurt around us, and reaching out to help others, even strangers. To a person who has found God, no person, ever again, is a stranger. In that is the perfection of love, the kind of love that God is, a love that knows no strangers.

A strikingly large portion of the Gospel story relates to the dramatic unfolding of that mission statement. The conflict between the scribes and the Pharisees and the Good Shepherd is the tension between those obsessed with inflexible insistence on the letter of the law regardless of the damage inflicted on people, and the Good Shepherd, who went out in search of the bruised and hurting sheep driven away by the self-righteous. "The scribes and Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses. All that they command you, therefore, observe and do. But do not imitate them, for they talk long but do nothing. They bind together heavy and oppressive burdens and lay them on people's shoulders, but do not lift a finger to lighten those burdens" (cf. Mt. 23)

The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, goes out looking for the lost, the troubled, and the bruised and hurting sheep and when He finds them, He picks them up, places them on His shoulders, and carries them back home because He loves the sheep.

The dichotomy is dramatic, because Jesus acknowledges the authority of the scribes and the Pharisees. They were the magisterium, the teaching authority appointed by God. Jesus told his disciples to obey them. He then calls the scribes and the Pharisees "blind guides who strain out the gnat but swallow the camel," and "blind guides leading the blind, and both fall into the pit."

When He refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd, He places himself in a role that is in direct contrast to the way the religious authorities treated people. They drove the sheep away by excommunicating them and treating them harshly when they broke religious laws. The same thing happens wholesale to this very day. The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, goes out in search of those who have been driven out. When He finds them wandering aimlessly, hurt and bruised, He gently picks them up, binds their wounds and carries them back home.

You see that same theme weaving its way through the rest of the Gospels, as it is developed, refined, and clarified until it becomes as clear as polished crystal what Jesus is trying to teach and which is the essence of the Good News. "I have come to save, not to alienate and abandon."

The incident of the apostles walking through the field of grain reflects another fact of that same message. It was a Sabbath day. The apostles were hungry. They were taking the heads off the grain and eating them like peanuts. The Pharisees seemed to have jumped out of the grain fields, ready to accuse. "Look at your disciples! They are breaking the Sabbath."

Jesus' reply jolted them. "Have you never read what David did when he and his men were hungry - how e entered God's house and took and ate the holy bread and gave it to his men, even though only priests were allowed to eat it? The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath."

That brief encounter opens up a whole new insight into the purpose of religious law. The showbread was sacred. It symbolized the living presence of Yahweh in the midst of the community. It was fir the Jews as sacred as the Eucharist is for Christians. In fact, it prefigured the Eucharist. No Jew would dare touch the showbread, as no Catholic would dare break open the tabernacle and take the Eucharist for lunch. It is shocking to hear Jesus justifying David's actions. Yet it expresses Jesus' attitude toward law. Law is only a support to guide and assist God's children. It is not to be an oppressive burden. It must be responsive to human need. "The law was made for man, not man for the law, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (cf. Mk. 3 and Lk. 6). Where there is a human need the law must bend. It is God's children who are sacred to God, not laws. Laws are to protect or assist God's children. If a law does not do that, it should be re-evaluated, and, perhaps, abrogated.

One cannot help but think of religious laws and customs today that may have had meaning at one time but are a hindrance to the healthy practice of spirituality in our times. This is not to say that morality should change, but there are many religious laws that have nothing to do with the moral law. They are merely arbitrary ordinances that could be changed. Often people's attachment to traditions and customs resist changing them even though they may cause of occasion untold damage to many good people. When religious leaders see the damage done, one would think as good shepherds concerned for the sheep they would be the first to recognize the need for change. It is difficult to understand their obsessive attachment to customs and practices when they more often give rise to scandal than inspire goodness. It might do well for the religious leaders of all the denominations to re-evaluate practices that are totally out of sync with the mind and spirit of Jesus, and which many good people no longer observe because they know they are foreign to the mind of Jesus. That was the basis for the constant conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders of His day. They enforced laws that long since had lost their meaning. They incessantly concocted new prohibitions and threatened God's punishment if people did not observe them. It is hard to understand why religious leaders do not see they are doing the same thing today when Jesus condemned in the scribes and Pharisees. They would rather police people's lives than guide, instruct, counsel, heal, and inspire the way Jesus did. There is more damage done to people's faith by mean-spirited religious leaders than by the marginal ideas of suspect theologians whose writings few people read anyway. I can think of only a few persons whose faith was damaged by theologians, but I know tens of thousands who have left their faith because of the narrowness and meanness of clergy obsessed with enforcing doctrine and laws. They seem to have an aversion to discuss and arrive at an understanding, and would rather decree and punish. They Good Shepherd loved the sheep and went out to bring them home. The hired hands ruled the sheep with meanness and drove them away. Jesus could teach the highest of ideals, but when people fall short of those ideals, He dealt with them compassionately. The others punished when they were not obeyed and care little about the damage done to the people's lives and people's faith. That is the great sin in all religion.